


stormy weather (these days we have each other)

by ghosthunter



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst and Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, self-indulgent tire fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 14:59:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17583029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghosthunter/pseuds/ghosthunter
Summary: Marcus, Evgeny, and the bye week.





	stormy weather (these days we have each other)

**Author's Note:**

> The Caps suck, the Devils suck, here is some feelings-vomit about my OTP because that's how I deal with my team being in a slump. And then I give it a title like a Fall Out Boy song, even though the title is actually from a Mayday Parade song, and no, I do not need your judgement at this tender time in my life.
> 
> Thanks to Jarka for the beta and for literally laying on a hotel room bed in the same room as me while I wrote like, half of this. And thanks to Fall Out Boy and "It's Hard to Be Religious When Certain People Are Never Incinerated by Bolts of Lightning" just because I can. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s pouring rain and near freezing when Marcus walks out of the arena after the game, and frankly it suits his mood. Another game, another loss. He can’t even tell himself at least this time he scored and feel better about it. It feels good to finally get points on the board, but it also feels like it doesn’t really matter, not with the team playing like they are.

He wants to hold out hope that it will be better after the Bye. He needs to. He’s not sure he can.

He turns the radio up too loud on his drive home, not wanting to be alone with his thoughts. But it’s only a matter of going home and making it through the night before catching a flight out of Newark in the morning.

It would be his luck this season for his flight to get delayed by the snow.

It rains, but that’s about all, and his flight leaves on time.

 

 

The house is empty and quiet when his Uber drops him off, and he lets himself in and stashes his bags in the bedroom. He’s got a couple of hours to kill alone, and he promised to make dinner. He changes out of his jeans and into sweatpants, putters around a little bit before heading to the kitchen to get to work.

He’s almost done when he hears the door open and close, and he calls out, “I’m in the kitchen.” It’s a few minutes before a pair of arms wraps around his waist from behind, and a face comes to rest against his shoulder, breath hot through the fabric of his t-shirt.

“Are you okay?” Marcus asks, because he doesn’t know what else he’s supposed to say. He saw the score of the game. Evgeny just sighs against his shoulder.

They stand in silence while Marcus cooks, Evgeny’s arms hooked around him, his face buried in Marcus’s shoulder, just breathing.

“You gotta let go,” Marcus says quietly. “So we can eat.”

“I’m fine,” Evgeny finally says, lifting his head up from Marcus’s shoulder, because of course he says he’s fine. He could be dying on the floor, and he’d still say he’s fine.

“It’s okay,” Marcus says quietly, and shifts the skillet off the burner. He twists in Evgeny’s arms. “I don’t think I am.”

“Come back,” Evgeny says. “I’m not doing this without you anymore.”

Marcus raises his arms up and wraps them around Evgeny’s neck, leaning in to kiss him softly. “We don’t get to make the decisions about that,” Marcus says, even though both of them know that already. Evgeny doesn’t say anything, just sighs, a harsh exhale against Marcus’s lips.

“I love you,” Marcus says, and bumps their noses together. “Let’s have dinner.”

“Love you, too,” is all Evgeny says.

 

Evgeny has practice but they’re seeing how long they can push it before he’s actually late, laying in bed tangled around each other, the blanket kicked on the floor and the sheets a little slick with sweat. Marcus is seriously thinking about leaving a hickey on Evgeny’s collarbone and is already getting pretty serious with some beard burn when Evgeny starts actually trying to squirm out of bed.

Marcus is still propped up in bed when Evgeny gets out of the shower, reading on his phone. Evgeny stops and watches him for a second mid-way through pulling his underwear on.

“What?” Marcus asks, realizing he’s being watched and tossing his phone down on the bed. He makes eye contact with Evgeny and stretches, arching his body in a way that tugs the sheets down, exposing - well, a lot. 

“Fuck off,” Evgeny says, and turns away, tugging on a pair of pants. “I can’t get back in bed with you.”

Marcus grins at him. “It’s still gonna be here when you get home.”

“You’re not gonna go with me?” Evgeny asks.

“Do you want me to?” Marcus asks.

“I’ll make you breakfast?” Evgeny says.

Marcus sighs dramatically and rolls out of bed.

 

When Marcus comes downstairs into the kitchen, Evgeny is almost finished making breakfast. “Shake’s in fridge,” Evgeny says, not turning away from the stove. His own shake is sitting on the counter next to the plates.

“Will you stop and get me coffee on the way there?” Marcus asks, even as he’s opening up the fridge to get the protein shake. He lifts himself up to sit on the counter to drink it.

“You gonna ever stop sitting on my counters?” Evgeny asks, turning around and looking at him for a moment, before turning back to the eggs on the stove.

“Our counters,” Marcus corrects. “And probably not.”

“Bad for them,” Evgeny tells him. “Breakfast ready.”

Marcus takes a drink of the shake, then slides off the counter and follows Evgeny over to the breakfast bar to sit down. They sit together in mostly silence, breakfast a quick affair because Evgeny needs to get to practice and they need to go if they’re going to have time to stop for coffee.

They end up not really having time to stop for coffee, but Marcus knows there are plenty of places he can just walk to get a cup while Evgeny goes in for practice, and it’s probably a distraction for him to be there when the Capitals had such a rough game before. Evgeny parks on the seventh level and sighs, sitting there for a moment before he even turns off the car.

Marcus leans over and kisses him softly, and Evgeny brings his hand up to play with the curls at the back of Marcus’s neck, where they stick out below his touque.

“You need a haircut,” Evgeny says, after Marcus pulls away.

“You don’t like it? Maybe I’ll grow it out again, long like it was that one time,” Marcus says.

“I didn’t know you then,” Evgeny says.

“You’re stalling,” Marcus says.

“I know.”

Evgeny finally turns off the car and they get out, heading for the stairwell. Marcus kisses him one last time before they part, Evgeny heading upstairs to the rink and Marcus down to go find coffee. It’s not until he comes back that he realizes how many people are there to watch practice, and he definitely doesn’t want to get noticed. Evgeny’s on a lot of people’s shit lists - distraction boyfriend is not going to do him any favors.

At least they’ll let him in on the Capitals side of the building, even if he’s technically a traitor now. The perks of having been drafted there, playing seven seasons there, he guesses. He sees people he knows, and people who say hi, and it’s nice and it’s - he hates to think of it as home, even though he thinks of the house that Evgeny lives in as home, the one they bought together, the one they share, and not at all his apartment in Jersey - but it’s like coming home.

Standing there and seeing all the artwork emblazoned with “Stanley Cup Champions” leaves a hollow place in his stomach. He wants that. He was supposed to have that. It was his hands that Evgeny should’ve been passing the Cup into and - instead he has two concussions and a first round exit under his belt.

Sometimes it hurts too much to think about. More often than he’d like to admit, he catches himself thinking too much about a bad season and the even worse one before, and he ends up clutching his coffee cup too hard until he feels the cardboard start to give under his hand. He has to take a deep breath to stop himself, then shrugs out of his jacket and goes to find a place to stand along the windows so he can actually see practice.

It’s strange, standing there, not really being able to read the numbers on the helmets from where he is, but knowing them anyway from the shapes of their bodies and the way they move. Marcus knows Evgeny better than he knows anyone, probably, the way he skates and stick handles and shoots, but he knows Nicke, too, and Andre and Ovi and so many guys that he grew and learned and trained with.

He thinks he can pick out some of the new ones, too - Vrana, maybe, from how fast he skates, even though they didn’t play together that much, the rookie defenseman by how much hair sticks out of his helmet. But Marcus has only played them twice this season, and he doesn’t know most of them. Not at all. Maybe he doesn’t even know the ones he used to anymore.

He just drinks his coffee and tries not to think about it. Maybe he’ll see if they’ll let him use the weight room when the guys have skate in the morning, instead of just standing around watching. Better than watching and being in his head, he thinks.

When practice is over, he heads downstairs to wait for Evgeny.

“Jojo!” Andre yells at the top of his lungs when he spots Marcus, and all but flings himself into Marcus’s arms. Both of them almost end up sprawled on the floor. Marcus is glad he’s thrown away his coffee cup and has both hands free or they probably would.

“Hey,” Marcus says, and wraps his arms tight around Andre until it seems like both of them are seeing how hard they can squeeze before the other yelps.

“Are you gonna squeeze him to death or can I hug him, too?” Nicke asks after a few moments of them squeezing at each other. Andre lets go of Marcus reluctantly so that Nicke can step in to hug him instead.

“I missed your stupid fucking face,” Marcus tells Nicke, who grins at him.

“When did you get in?” Nicke asks. “Yesterday?”

“Yeah, before you guys got back from Chicago,” Marcus says. “I promised Zhenya that I’d make him dinner when I got here.”

“Whipped,” Nicke says, smirking at him.

“Fuck off,” Marcus says.

They’re still standing around shooting the shit when Evgeny finally comes out of the locker room, showered and ready to head home. As they’re about to get in the elevator, Andre hugs him one last time.

“I miss you,” Andre whispers, and Marcus remembers that Andre is having a hard time, too. It makes Marcus squeeze him a little harder, hold on a little longer than he meant to. He can’t make things right for Andre any more than he can make them right for himself or for Evgeny.

“I miss you, too,” Marcus says, and whispers, “little brother,” because Andre is, still is after all. Andre makes a noise that might be a sob and keeps his face turned away from Marcus as he walks away.

 

 

Marcus is quiet on the drive home. Evgeny notices.

“Nothing you can do, you know,” Evgeny says after a while, when they’re stopped at a light. Marcus has been staring out the window, his brain turned off as he watches Virginia pass by outside the window. He tips his head to look at Evgeny, who is watching the road. Evgeny’s hand comes to rest on his thigh, just above his knee.

“I know,” Marcus says, watching Evgeny’s profile. “And I fucking hate that.”

Evgeny squeezes Marcus’s leg gently, and Marcus reaches down and links their fingers together, resting on his leg. They’re quiet again after that.

“I know that we don’t have a lot of control over a lot of aspects of our jobs,” Marcus says after a long while. They’re almost home, and he’s stroking his thumb absently across the palm of Evgeny’s hand. “I just hate letting people down. And I hate seeing you unhappy.”

“Not unhappy,” Evgeny says. “Still playing hockey. And you’re here.”

“Zhenya,” Marcus says.

“Frustrated,” Zhenya says. “But not unhappy.”

They eat lunch together at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, pressed so close together that it’s actually hard to eat without bumping against each other. It’s stupid, but it’s something that makes both of them giggle and start bumping each other deliberately.

“I wanna go work out tomorrow, if I can, while you’re at morning skate,” Marcus says as they’re settling in on the couch together after lunch, ready to nap to some TV.

“It optional, so I might not skate,” Evgeny says, putting his feet up on the chaise and letting Marcus curl up against him, stretched out along the length of the couch, his head against Evgeny’s thigh.

“That’s fine. I just feel like I need to move. Sweat,” Marcus says. Evgeny tugs the toque off his head and threads his fingers into Marcus’s hair.

“I could help you with that,” Evgeny says, and actually wiggles his eyebrows.

“While I appreciate a good bedroom workout,” Marcus says, voice dry, “you know it’s not the same. Plus, pre-game acrobatic sex is off the table.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Evgeny says. “But off the table right now?”

“Right this instant?” Marcus asks. Evgeny hums. “Later, definitely.”

Evgeny laughs. “All right.”

Marcus falls asleep with Sportscenter on in the background and Evgeny’s fingers threading through his hair.

He wakes up some time later with the sun down and the television switched over to a movie. Evgeny’s fingers are still in his hair, but he’s drooled on Evgeny’s sweatpants. He pushes himself up, wiping at his face, feeling a little disoriented.

“You shouldn’t have let me sleep so long,” he says.

“You seem tired,” Evgeny says, shrugging. “Besides, what else I’m gonna do? Other than watch more TV - we got a game tomorrow.” He shifts into a different position, then makes a face. “You drooled on me? Mackan, you can’t just go around drooling on people.”

“I do what I want,” Marcus says. “What do you want to do for dinner?”

They end up ordering in, because there’s not much food left in the house with Evgeny having games the next two days and leaving on vacation after that. After dinner, they watch a basketball game that Evgeny’s interested in, working their way through a bottle of wine, at least until Marcus gets bored with it.

“Remember what I said about later?” Marcus says.

“Hm?” Evgeny says.

“I’m going to bed,” Marcus tells him. He finishes the last of his wine and gets up, taking both of their empty glasses and what’s left of the bottle into the kitchen to put it away.

He heads upstairs, strips down and climbs into bed. He knows that he’s going to have to wait a little bit for Evgeny to come upstairs, which is fine. He can entertain himself, which mostly consists of texting, but it takes long enough that he definitely considers taking care of a few things himself.

Then again…

When Evgeny finally does come upstairs, it’s to find Marcus spread out on their bed, two fingers in and already breathing hard. Evgeny just stops in the doorway and watches him. Marcus doesn’t stop, just lets his knees fall further apart and gives Evgeny the full show, watches as Evgeny pulls his lip between his teeth as he watches Marcus’s fingers.

“You got started without me,” Evgeny finally says. It’s easy to see the shape of Evgeny’s cock through the fabric of his sweatpants. Good, Marcus thinks a little absently. He wants Evgeny to want him, still, even after months spent apart now that they’re on different teams.

“I told you I was coming to bed,” Marcus says, a little breathless. Evgeny’s fingers close around his wrist and pull his fingers out, pull them away. Marcus whines at him, until Evgeny leans down and kisses him.

“What if I wanted you to fuck me?” Evgeny asks, and Marcus laughs, even as Evgeny pulls away from him to strip out of his clothes. “You’re in here touching yourself and what about me?”

“I know I’m not going to fuck you the night before you have a game,” Marcus tells him, wiping his hand off on the sheets they’ve left a mess from the night before and the morning.

“You could be gentle with me,” Evgeny says, climbing up on the bed, playing at kissing Marcus but not quite, making Marcus chase his mouth.

“Or not,” Marcus says, because he knows they’d start out trying to keep it chill before Evgeny started begging him for more and harder until they’re both exhausted and aching. He’s familiar with the routine. He does the same fucking thing.

“Or not,” Evgeny agrees, covering Marcus’s mouth with his and slipping his hand down between Marcus’s thighs, finding him slick and open and ready. He teases with gentle fingers until he has Marcus squirming underneath him, gripping at Evgeny’s wrist with the hand that isn’t pinned beneath Evgeny’s body.

“Please,” he says, and his voice cracks.

“Yeah,” Evgeny says, and shifts, sliding his hand through the sheets until he finds the lube thrown there. He mouths along Marcus’s collarbone as he strokes a slick hand down himself, exhaling against Marcus’s skin as he pushes in slow.

They lie still, Evgeny pressed up against him, Evgeny’s mouth pressed against his neck, for just a moment. Marcus’s eyes are closed and he’s breathing hard, one hand gripping the sheets and the other pinned by Evgeny’s, their fingers tangled.

“You okay?” Evgeny asks him, after a moment of just their breathing in the quiet.

“Yeah,” Marcus says, and shifts his hips ever so slightly, until it sends a spike of arousal through him. “Yeah,” he repeats. “Fuck me.”

Evgeny laughs, then rolls his hips, making Marcus moan beneath him.

 

 

Marcus drives them to the rink in the morning, and it’s funny how when Marcus is driving, they miraculously find the time to stop for coffee. Marcus secretly thinks Evgeny has a plan to wean him off coffee, every time he comes back to their house in DC, because there never seems to be any in the house, and they never seem to have time to stop.

It’s not working and it just makes Marcus cranky, so he thinks Evgeny should’ve figured it out by now. Secretly, Marcus likes the way Evgeny’s nose wrinkles up after he kisses Marcus, when he can taste the coffee on Marcus’s tongue. It’s cute.

“They say optional skate, but is not so optional today,” Evgeny tells Marcus. He’s been staring at his phone for most of the drive as it buzzes constantly. “You have weight room mostly to yourself.”

“Fun,” Marcus says, taking a long sip of his coffee as they sit at a light. Evgeny makes a non-committal noise.

By the time guys start to filter into the locker room, Marcus has finished his weight circuit, showered, and gotten dressed again. Skate is slow to wrap up, considering there’s a game, considering they’re about to go into a back to back.

“Long meeting,” Marcus says, his voice carefully neutral, once they’re back in the car. “But it looked like skate wasn’t. Bad.”

“It’s a game, you know?” Evgeny says, like Marcus doesn’t know. He’s not sure that Hynes would let the tackling and horsing around fly, even if it was after practice the way it was for the Capitals today. “If we’re not having fun, then why are we here?”

Marcus reaches a hand out and grabs Evgeny’s, squeezing it tightly.

 

 

It wasn’t over.

The Sharks score with a second left on the clock and the air rushes out of the building because it seems like Caps fans can’t believe that it really happened. But it’s right there, up on the scoreboard. Tie game. Six to six, Evander Kane has scored with a second left.

Marcus pulls his toque all the way down over his entire face and lets his head thump down onto the table in front of him. It should’ve been a win. Evgeny scored, Ovi has a hat trick, they almost had it, and - 

And it’s over. Hertl scores, he completes his hat trick, and the Caps lose. They have one more game. One more chance to break the losing streak before the break. Marcus fixes his toque and goes to wait for Evgeny.

It takes… a while. Marcus gets it, there’s press and he’s sure Reirden has a lot to say to them. He just finds a place to sit and goes through his texts and a few e-mails while he kills time. The only problem is his phone’s almost dead. It’s totally dead by the time Evgeny gets loose and is able to leave.

They walk side by side to the car, silent. Marcus gets in the driver’s seat, because they’re heading straight for the airport. Then he’ll go back to their empty house and wait for Evgeny to come back home from Toronto.

He’s just finished plugging his phone in to charge when Evgeny leans over and kisses him. Marcus isn’t above making out in the car - and he’s not above doing it in the players’ garage at the arena, it’s not like it would be anywhere near the first time - but they’re on a deadline.

“You scored,” Marcus says.

“That’s something,” Evgeny says.

“Got a point,” Marcus says.

“Even better,” Evgeny says. He’s watching Marcus’s lips as Marcus speaks.

“We’re not hooking up in the car,” Marcus says.

“You’re no fun,” Evgeny says, and gives him a fake pout as he leans back in his seat.

Marcus laughs and puts the car in drive.

 

 

Toronto does not go well.

All things considered it’s kind of okay, but then… then it all goes wrong and Marcus ends up turning it off early. If he lies down, he can get in a nap before he has to drive out to pick Evgeny up at the airport.

Their bye weeks don’t quite sync up, with Marcus’s having started before Evgeny’s, but it’s enough that they still have time to get in a vacation together before they have to be back in their own cities with their own teams. A few days of relaxing on a beach somewhere, maybe a little sight-seeing or - Marcus doesn’t really know - fucking snorkeling, maybe.

What he knows is that he’s glad to see Evgeny when he gets off the plane. He stashes his bag in the trunk and slams it a little harder than Marcus thinks is necessary, and Marcus expects him to be in a lot worse mood when he does get in the car. Instead, he just leans across the console and kisses Marcus, long and slow.

“Hello to you, too,” Marcus says, even as Evgeny is tugging Marcus’s toque off and tossing it into the back seat.

“Can we hook up in the car now?” Evgeny asks him, his fingers gripping tight to the curls at the back of Marcus’s neck.

Marcus starts laughing against Evgeny’s mouth. “No,” he tells him. “I’m not hooking up with you in the car again. That’s how we end up with lower body injuries.”

Evgeny cackles in his face. A full, real laugh. Marcus feels like his heart is swelling, almost overwhelming. He loves Evgeny’s laugh. He can’t think of many things that he doesn’t love about Evgeny, actually.

“You owe me then,” Evgeny tells him.

“I don’t owe you shit,” Marcus says, putting the car in gear to drive them home.

“What?” Evgeny says. “My team is on a seven game losing streak - “

“You won the Stanley Cup,” Marcus cuts in.

“ - and I come home to you,” Evgeny barrels on, “and I say you to, the man I love, I say let’s have sex in the car, and you tell me no.”

“Someone has to tell you no about something,” Marcus says. “You’re out of control.”

“You have too much control,” Evgeny tells him. “Your control has no control over me.”

“If I could look at you right now,” Marcus says. “What do you think my face would be saying.”

“That you don’t love me as much as I love you,” Evgeny says. He says shit like that because he knows he can get a rise out of Marcus, and it works every god damned time.

“No!” Marcus yells at him. “That’s bullshit and you fucking know it.”

“Prove it!” Evgeny yells back at him, laughing.

“I am driving!” Marcus yells. He might be swerving a little - he’s certainly not doing a very good job of driving down the road with the two of them yelling and laughing the way they are.

They get stuck at a light turning off the highway onto the streets near their house. Their house, the one they picked out and bought together, when Marcus signed his three year contract, when they thought they were going to be together on the Capitals forever. Evgeny reaches over and tugs Marcus’s hand into his.

“Hey,” he says into the quiet. “I don’t really think you don’t love me as much.”

Marcus looks over at him, the way the street lights make his profile sharp, his eyes dark. Marcus just says, “I know,” and squeezes his hand tight around Evgeny’s. “I didn’t think you meant it.”

Evgeny leans across to kiss Marcus, and someone beeps at them because the light turns green.

 

 

Evgeny has Wizards tickets, so they do that, then they catch a flight out and spend a few days at a full service resort. They end up going snorkeling. Every picture they take together shows a sunburn across Evgeny’s nose and across Marcus’s cheeks.

They spend the last morning before they go home in bed together, like they can save up touches to keep when they’re separated by Maryland and Delaware and New Jersey. Marcus sleeps with his head against Evgeny’s shoulder on the flight home.

Marcus has to be back at practice before Evgeny’s bye week is over, so instead of going back to DC, they fly straight into Newark. All told, they spend a lot less time together at Marcus’s Newark apartment than they do at their house in DC. The apartment feels weirdly like it’s not something they share. Like it’s just Marcus’s, and Evgeny is only visiting.

He is. Evgeny doesn’t drive in Newark, and can’t go and hang out around the practice rink the way Marcus can in DC.

The last night they have together, the Devils play the Penguins in Pittsburgh. Marcus is nervous in the morning, and riled up by the afternoon. There’s not enough words Evgeny can say to calm him down. He needs to prove something.

“You’re going to score a hat trick,” Evgeny says. They’re sitting in Marcus’s hotel room, because Marcus is supposed to be taking his pre-game nap, and Evgeny isn’t even supposed to be there. Instead of napping, Marcus is wired. He gives a derisive snort at Evgeny’s suggestion.

“Sure. Nine years in the league and I haven’t before,” Marcus says.

“Fuck off,” Evgeny says. “I’m telling you you’re doing it. Tell yourself you’re doing it, then go fucking do it.”

“I wish it worked like that,” Marcus says.

“Make it work like that,” Evgeny says.

“Suck my _dick_ ,” Marcus says. He doesn’t mean it quite like that, but - 

“Will it calm you the fuck down?” Evgeny asks. Marcus throws his hands up and flops back down on the bed.

It sort of works. At the very least, Marcus relaxes into the pillows and lets Evgeny curl up around him, and when Evgeny falls asleep, Marcus dozes, too.

He doesn’t score a hat trick. Maybe he never will. But they win, and winning feels good. It feels even better to be able to go back to the hotel at the end of the night and know that Evgeny will be there waiting for him.

One day, he thinks, that’s what he’ll go home to every night.

**Author's Note:**

> on twitter @notedgoon probably plotting something terrible. sorry for what i said about andre.


End file.
